‘I have done,’ she said huskily. ‘I went on the flight of my life. Only now I’m tired of flying and I’ve discovered that I need somewhere to come home, to roost.’

He stared at her for a minute which seemed like an hour before letting go of a sigh which seemed to come from deep, dark place inside him. Then he opened his arms.

‘You’ve found it,’ he said simply. ‘I’m right here.’

Her heart missed a beat as she stared at him, knowing that this was crunch time. That if she took those few small steps then she really would have to leave the past behind for ever. ‘Dante...’ she whispered.

‘There is just one more thing, and it’s probably the most important thing of all.’ His lips softened as every fibre in his being ached to touch her. But he knew that she had to come to him. He could not take from her what she needed to give to him freely. ‘I love you. You do realise that?’

She read the truth in the molten depths of his black eyes and her heart turned over with longing. ‘Oh, Dante,’ she whispered back. ‘Darling, darling Dante. I love you. I tried so hard not to—but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.’

He started laughing. ‘Then what the hell are you doing over there?’

She moved almost without realising it, until he was holding her, and she was kissing his lips and his nose and his eyelids, and tears were welling up in her eyes and dripping down her cheeks.

‘I’m safe now,’ she whispered.

He closed his eyes against her silken hair and let her cry as he knew she needed to. He let her cry until there were no tears left, and then he gently pushed her in the direction of the bathroom and told her to go and wash her face. When she returned, she found him on the sofa, with two glasses of red wine on the table before him, and it was as if he’d read her mind—for wasn’t this scene what she’d longed for when she’d first walked in?

She walked over and sat on his lap, facing him, before lowering her head to kiss him. She kissed him tenderly. Deeply and slowly. She kissed him with all the love she’d been holding back until she felt him smile against her lips, and when she pulled away he gave a mock-groan.

‘Just one more thing,’ she said.

‘Hurry up,’ he grumbled. ‘I want you in my bed within the next ten minutes.’

‘It’s about all those men I told you I slept with.’

His face darkened. ‘I am doing my best to be a tolerant and modern man,’ he warned. ‘But there is a limit, tesoro.’

Ignoring his scowl, Justina wriggled her shoulders. ‘Well, they don’t exist. I made them up.’

‘What do you mean, you made them up?’

‘Just that.’ She shrugged as she met the dawning comprehension in his eyes. ‘I pretended that I’d had other lovers because I wanted you to believe I was over you. But I was never over you—I could never seem to stop wanting you or loving you. I invented a whole raft of fictitious lovers so that you would think I had moved on. Only I hadn’t. You see, there’s only ever been you, Dante. Only you.’

She watched as the implications behind her words registered and he gave a distinctly macho smile of satisfaction.

‘Oh, I see,’ he drawled.

‘Now you can kiss me,’ she said.

He smoothed back the hair which was clinging to her damp cheeks and smiled. ‘I’ve missed you, Justina.’

‘You were doing a good impression of a man who was fine without me. When we came back from Tuscany it was as if you’d stopped caring completely.’

‘Because I knew that I had to force your hand. I had to show you what life would be like if we split. I had to push you away in order to get you back. It was a gamble, but it was one I was prepared to take. You had to come to me because you wanted me—because you know your life would be bleak without me. Just as mine would without you.’

She lifted her hand to his face and stared into the brilliance of his eyes.

‘I love you so much, Dante D’Arezzo,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to spend the rest of my life showing you just how much. But now, if you wouldn’t mind, would you please just kiss me?’

EPILOGUE

JUSTINA WAS OUT in the garden when the doorbell rang. She’d been writing a song in the autumn sunshine and she glanced at Nico, sleeping peacefully in his pram, before going into the house to see who was there. Maybe Dante had forgotten his key. She hoped so. He wasn’t due home for another couple of hours, but perhaps he’d managed to cut his meeting short. He was getting much better at doing that, she thought. They could take the baby for a walk to the nearby park—maybe stop off at that new coffee shop on the way home and sit at one of the tables outside.

But the figure standing on the doorstep of the Spitalfields house was completely unexpected, and Justina stood stock-still as all kinds of conflicting emotions flooded over her. She felt resignation and slight irritation—but, interestingly, the thing she felt most of all was love as she looked at her mother.

As usual, Elaine Perry was dressed in a style which was slightly too young for her years. Her admittedly very good figure was squeezed into a pair of jeans, and she was wearing a soft leather jacket which matched her caramel-

coloured boots. From her narrow wrists clanged a symphony of narrow silver bands, and the enormous handbag she carried was one which was regularly toted by supermodels and celebrities.

‘Hello, Jus,’ she said.

Justina screwed up her nose. ‘Well, this is a surprise,’ she said drily. ‘Where’s Jacques?’

‘It’s Jean, actually, and he’s...’ The older woman gave a helpless kind of shrug. ‘He’s history.’

‘Right.’ Justina digested this. ‘So, are you coming in? Or are you just passing?’

There was a moment of hesitation while Elaine Perry delved around in her bag before holding up a package. It was wrapped in shiny paper and covered with images of dancing blue teddy bears. ‘I’d like to come in, if I may. I’ve brought a present for the baby.’ She looked almost sheepish as she met Justina’s eyes. ‘For...Nico.’

Justina swallowed. There was so much she could have said in response to that. The old Justina might have commented that she’d thought her mother was too young to be a grandmother, but she had learned to think before she spoke. She had learned so much. People changed, Dante had said—and he was right. People did. She remembered what he’d said about forgiveness, too. That people couldn’t be free to move on into the future if they stayed shackled to the resentments of the past. She recognised that this wasn’t so much a toy that her mother was holding out towards her as an olive branch.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘Because I know he’d just love to meet you.’

‘Would he?’

And for the first time in her life Justina saw her mother through adult eyes. She saw the vulnerability in her face and the thick make-up which failed to cover up the deepening wrinkles. And her heart turned over.

‘Of course he would, Mum,’ she said softly. ‘It’s true he’s not quite nine months old, but on some subliminal level he’s bound to recognise you because you’re family.’

Her mother was still there when Dante came home a couple of hours later, to be greeted by the rather amazing sight of two women sitting close together in the garden, the older one cradling his son.

He wondered what was going on, and then Justina looked up at him. ‘Oh, you’re home,’ she said simply.

He smiled into her eyes and all his questions were forgotten. How could he possibly think straight when she was looking at him like that? ‘Si, tesoro. I’m home.’

Elaine Perry stayed for dinner. She told them—falteringly at first—that she was tired. Tired of being the mistress of some rich man who didn’t value her. She told them how hard it was to keep up the perpetual fight to look younger than her years. It was only when she got on to the subject of leg-waxing that Justina quietly changed the subject and gave her mother another hug—though she couldn’t help but worry about what the future held for someone who had only ever been reliant on the largesse of men.